They’ve been “dating” for almost three years when he realizes that this is commitment. Not because he’s had any say in it, but just because it’s what happens when you wake up with pink lipstick smeared across your cheek every day for more than a week and you can’t remember the last time you had a night just-to-yourself. She starts making up excuses for him to spend time with her family, forcing him into awkward conversations with her parents. Eventually he reaches a point where he’s bought an x-box and she’s practically moved into his apartment and he really doesn’t have an excuse anymore. It’s commit or get out, kind of like his relationship with Dunder-Mifflin, and he gives in.

His proposal is nothing special. They’re at Poor Richards, Jim and Pam and Toby and Meredith and Creed and Oscar and Kevin are all there and no one’s really paying any attention to them. She’s already had three and a half drinks and he’s not even kind of sober. She’s leaning in really close and he just asks: “Marry me?”

And she screams and starts giggling and he resists the urge to plug his ears like Creed.

This is going to be the worst engagement ever.

--

Her parents are mad that he never asked their permission, but they get over it. They’re happy to see Kelly getting married—he hears her mother mutter “it’s about time” when they think he can’t hear them and he almost feels defensive.

All she talks about anymore is wedding plans. She pulls out a book full of patterns and dresses and flower arrangements. He starts to find scraps of fabric all over his apartment, little stray threads all over his clothes. He’s never seen her this excited, though. Not even when Jen and Vince confirmed their relationship or when Vanity Fair first published pictures of Suri Cruise. She drags Pam out to shop for dresses one weekend—he’d seen the look of horror on Pam’s face the one time Kelly mentioned a double wedding, but the thought passed and everyone relaxed—and they come home tipsy and laughing. “Oh My God, Ryan! We found it! The perfect dress!” she laughs and he kind of can’t believe he’s smiling.

--

Michael throws him a bachelor party and invites all the guys at the office. He gets so drunk he passes out and Jim has to drive him home. He regrets it the next morning because Kelly’s screaming so loud about place settings that he thinks his head is going to explode. He takes a couple aspirin and tries to remember what it was like to be in college, when he fucked around and never did any work.

Before he knows it they’re getting married. His parents have flown in from Boston with his kid brother, Drew (his best man), and Kelly’s sisters all look like miniature whores in the dresses she picked out for them. He has to admit she looks pretty coming down the aisle, though. Her make-up isn’t too heavy—“This is serious, Ryan, because I can’t overdo it or anything! What if I start to cry, I know I’m going to cry, I can’t cry if I’ve got mascara on!”—and her dress is beautiful. She’d decided not to go with a traditional Indian wedding. After all, Ryan is Catholic, though he hasn’t been to church since he graduated from high school. She wants to raise their children (“Oh, God, children,” he thinks) with Christmas and Easter dresses and he considers telling her that they don’t have to be Catholic, or even Christian, to celebrate Christmas, but he’s pretty sure this is really about a big white dress and a church wedding, so he says fine.

By the time she reaches him she’s already crying, big sloppy tears that are leaving trails down her cheeks. He brushes one away, and she sniffles, but it’s a happy sniffle. He doesn’t remember much of their vows, just that she cried right through them. When the priest says “you may kiss the bride” he does, and she tastes salty and sweet, not like their first kiss. That had just tasted hot and desperate.

They dance at the reception. He’s awkward, even though they took classes for three months, at her insistence, but she lost feeling in her toes years ago from too many pairs of high heels and it doesn’t really matter. She drinks too many glasses of champagne and when she’s laughing he thinks maybe he does love her, a little.

The fourth time he proposes she says yes. She’s come to the conclusion that she doesn’t want to die alone and her kids like him well enough. Why not get married?

It’s supposed to be small. The two of them and the kids in the courthouse. But he wants a best man, so that’s Dwight, and Dwight wants to bring Angela. Before she knows it he’s invited almost everyone he works with and she scrapes together a couple bridesmaids from the PTA. It’s nothing glamorous, not like her first wedding, with the flowers and the big white dress, but it’s nice.

Just like Michael.

She’d be lying if she said she didn’t like him. He’s sweet and he’s so good with the kids. Tommy thinks he’s hilarious. She knows that in a few years he won’t laugh so hard at Michael’s jokes, but she tries not to think about the future too much.

The right-now is more important.

--

They don’t have a real reception, but Michael invites everyone over to their new house (she found one they both like, a roomy building with plenty of space for the kids…more space than they really need, but what’s wrong with space?) and he barbeques (or Jim barbeques, but Michael stands over his shoulder the whole time, like a sports commentator, playing the expert). She eats standing up, balancing a paper plate in her left hand. When she gets a streak of barbeque sauce down the side of her dress it doesn’t really matter, not like if she was all decked out, but she makes a fuss anyway, and Michael’s so nice about it, practically licking it off the fabric.

She knows she could do better. She’s not an idiot. But she’s tired of Saturday nights alone and selling real estate. Michael tells her she doesn’t have to keep her job if she doesn’t want to—“Equality of…women. That’s what I’m all about. I love the ladies…and their…opportunities.”—and she’s always wanted to be a stay-at-home Mom. Michael wants them to have kids together, but she doesn’t know how likely that is. She’s almost 43 and well past a point in her life where she gives a damn about her biological clock. She’s said “we’ll see,” but she’s still taking her birth control pills.

All of Michael’s employees are really nice, nicer than anyone she works with. She’s met almost all of them before, but she’s never spent much time with them. Phyllis tells her all sorts of gossip about people she barely knows in a confiding half-whisper—“Jan, you know Jan, right? Well, rumor has it she and Toby are getting married! It’s so exciting. I just love weddings.”—and she coos over Pam and Jim’s six-month-old daughter, Lucy.

It’s a nice night, when the sun sets the stars are set clearly across the sky and the kids are worn out by nine thirty. She puts them down in their new bedrooms and goes back to join the party. Michael’s making a toast. As he finishes and waits for laughter that doesn’t come she steps up beside him.

“To the present,” she adds. “And a fresh start.”

“Fact: I proposed to my secret girlfriend last night.”

--

“I don’t see how it’s any of your business, but, yes, I am getting married.”

--

They manage to keep it a secret for about a week. Then Kelly spots the ring. “OH MY GOD, ANGELA!?! Are you getting married?!”

After that the cat’s out of the bag. Dwight declares it to Toby as an official office relationship and Michael starts planning a bachelor party. Pam starts dropping by her desk more often. “Have you set a date?” she’ll ask on her way to the supply closet, and “If you want any help dress shopping, I’m kind of a pro,” she’ll say on her way back. At first it’s annoying, but when she finds a pile of wedding magazines on her desk one morning she starts to get excited.

She used to dream about these sorts of things when she was a little girl, with a modest white dress and a beautiful veil. Her father has long since passed away, so he won’t be able to walk her down the aisle, but her mother flies in from Florida and starts helping her with the plans.

They’ll be getting married at her church of course, with the minister she grew up with. She asks some friends from the choir to be her bridesmaids, and agrees to let Dwight ask Michael to be a groomsman. Of course, Mose will be his Best Man. She takes Pam up on the offer to go dress shopping, but thinks most of Pam’s selections are whorish. She finds an inexpensive floor-length white dress that covers everything that needs covering and a veil with intricate embroidery. She thinks her father would be proud of her.

It’s a lot of work to plan a wedding, she discovers, and while she still disapproves, she has to give Pam some credit for planning two. She couldn’t do it. Not that she’ll ever need to. If, God forbid, Dwight should die, she won’t re-marry…and divorce is not an option.

The day of, she wakes up early. She’s never been one for wild displays of excitement, but she allows herself a few good smiles while she’s alone in her bedroom. She joins her mother in the kitchen for a healthy breakfast and feeds the cats. Kelly and Ryan are taking care of them while she’s away.

On the way to the church they get stuck in traffic. The kind where you inch along so slowly you don’t really believe you’re moving at all. When they finally get there she barely has time to change before the wedding march starts playing.

She walks down the aisle on her own. She doesn’t recognize everyone who’s there, Dwight invited some obscure family members and she doesn’t know everyone at her church. The pews closest to the front are filled with people from Dunder-Mifflin, all of them smiling at her, like they might actually like her, sometimes.

At the reception she makes sure Dwight keeps Michael away from the microphone. She’s heard him give enough embarrassing toasts to know she doesn’t want to hear another one. There’s no dancing, but everyone’s chattering and laughing. Dwight tells her she looks “like a beet field at first light,” which she knows to be a compliment, though even four years into this relationship she hasn’t adjusted to being compared to dirt and she allows him to kiss her on the cheek.

--

“Fact: I am officially off the market.”

--

“I’d rather not talk about my personal life. But, yes, it was very nice.”

It’s a marriage of convenience.

They’ve been friends for what seems like forever. Not best friends, not by any means, but they’ve sent Christmas cards and birthday cards and he knows her favorite color is cerulean blue. He tells her stories about Sasha that make her grin, and on a couple of occasions, after Michael’s done something particularly stupid and they’ve both had to deal with the fall-out, he’s invited her back to his apartment for a drink.

They talk a lot. About work, about the future. He’s got simple dreams, he thinks. Costa Rica and surfing and other things that will probably never happen or won’t work out the way he thinks because that’s the indication life has given him so far.

When they hook up it isn’t personal. It’s loneliness and pain and a desperate need for another warm body. She’s so tired and he’s so weak and they’re just clinging to each other in the dark.

There is no elaborate proposal, just two words, and she doesn’t blush or giggle or even say yes. She just nods and takes his hand and they agree.

They don’t get married because they’re in love…at least not in love with each other. They get married because she wants kids and he misses Sasha and he never got past casual flirting and blushing when it came to Pam (and it’s not like he ever stood a chance anyway). They get married because they’re on a beach and he’s had too much to drink and she says yes. They get married because everyone else does.

It’s warm and humid and she’s wearing a thin white dress she bought on the boardwalk. He’s got his khakis rolled up halfway to his knees and his shirt is wrinkled and baggy. His cheeks are burned, right under his eyes, but the skin on his arms is pale. Despite the sand and the sunset this isn’t romantic, it’s desperate.

Back in Scranton his ring looks worn and old. He’s still tired and he still misses Sasha and if he thought Michael hated him before he didn’t know what hate was. He calls her at the end of every day and he knows things aren’t any better for her. Corporate is on her for falling sales at Dunder-Mifflin Northeast and she still has to deal with Michael on an almost daily basis.

When she gets pregnant they finally buy a house and they each commute an hour every morning. He feels like he’s stepped into a word problem from the worksheet Sasha left on the kitchen table: if 2 cars head in opposite directions on the same stretch of highway will they ever reach the same destination?

He can’t find the right answer.

He proposes in the kitchen. Down on one knee while she’s making spaghetti. There’s a streak of tomato sauce on her cheek and her hair is tangled and wild. She knows because he snaps a picture of her just after she answers. He pulls a small disposable camera from his pocket as her mouth forms the word and *snap* there she is…frozen forever in tangles and spaghetti sauce, smiling wider than she ever has before.

“I want to marry you, Pam,” he tells her. “I want to be with you forever.”

She’s laughing and she doesn’t even see the ring before she says yes.

--

She buys her wedding dress at David’s Bridal. It’s off the rack, but gorgeous. The bodice hugs every curve and the full skirt swishes around her like a bell. She stands in front of the floor length mirror in the store for nearly an hour, watching the skirt swirl as she winds back and forth.

She asks Kelly to be a bridesmaid this time around and it’s only a little bit because Jim dared her to. It’s hard to resist when she’s so happy and Kelly has always been nice to her. They start eating lunch together so that they can talk about place settings and centerpieces and the best catering companies in Scranton. Ryan starts eating at his desk, but Jim grasps her hand under the break room table, strokes a thumb over her knuckle and stretches a grin across his face like he enjoys thinking about flower arrangements. She learns to hold a fork with her left hand.

--

The morning of the wedding she wakes up smiling. Her stomach feels warm and light and she’s shaking by the time she pulls back the covers.

Her mom drives her to the salon to get her hair done: long soft waves that cascade down her back. Her sisters surround her laughing and talking, but she doesn’t participate. She watches the mirror and bounces her feet up and down against the base of the chair, bites the inside of her lip to keep down the (happy) tears that are bubbling hot at the back of her throat.

At the church she reaches a hand out to touch the full-length mirror. She slides the ring off her finger to make way for the new one, cups it in her hand. She chokes down a smile as her father steps into the room. Offers her his arm.

The processional is slow but informal. No time is wasted on measured steps and counting. Her eyes catch his instantly and she feels the tears rising once again, burning her back teeth, her tonsils, her tongue.

They don’t write their own vows or deviate from the usual ceremony. She doesn’t even remember much besides “I do” and his fingers on her wrist. When the minister pronounces them man and wife Jim doesn’t even wait for permission. His lips press down on hers and his arm winds around her back, pulling her to him. She smiles against his teeth.